The Star Trek 2 script was supposed to be finished by Christmas 2009, and it's still not done. So it should surprise nobody that there's talk that the Trek sequel may be delayed six months from June 2012 release date.

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The other day, Roberto Orci told the TrekMovie reader forums that he and co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof still hadn't finished the Trek 2 script — because they were waiting for producer and presumptive director J.J. Abrams to sign off on their story ideas. Abrams, meanwhile, is busy finishing prep work on his new movie Super 8, and won't be able to weigh in on Star Trek until that's done. But not to worry — Orci added they have a 70-plus-page outline, which was enough to prep the movie from.

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But now, Deadline's anonymous sources are claiming that it's too late to get a major summer movie into production, with just a 70-page outline and no script, and have it ready for release in just over a year. Hence the idea of pushing the film back to Christmas 2012. And the Deadline article claims that the problem is not just that Abrams has been too busy with Super 8 to sign off on the storyline. The writers, too, have been too busy:

Kurtzman directed Welcome to People. Orci has been busy on Cowboys & Aliens and in prepping the Gavin Hood-directed sci-fi epic Ender's Game. Lindelof has been busy working on Prometheus, the Ridley Scott film for Fox that was conceived as a 3D prequel until Lindelof came on to do a rewrite and changed the concept so much that they consider it an original. The result? It doesn't sound like they are close to having a script that will live up to the high quality of the first film that revived a dead franchise.

The undertone of the Deadline article — which we should stress cites no sources on the record and should be treated as rumor for now — is that nobody wants a lackluster sequel along the lines of Iron Man 2 or Transformers 2. Which is a goal we can all get behind. [Deadline]